Thursday, April 1, 2010

April

It seems that everyone I've been talking with lately all have the same question: "Is it April already?" I can't believe it either. April. So much to do in April. It's the last full month of classes before my schedule gets topsy-turvy for finals; Easter, which is surprisingly early this year (or at least I think it is); Armenian Genocide Remembrance day (April 24th); and of course, probably the most important date in April, my mother's birthday.

But now, April has a more significant meaning for me. It was the calm before the storm, it was the last month that Ago lived normally. He did his normal routine: woke up at 4 am, ate, exercised, read, ate, read, napped, went to the grocery store/Vitamin Shoppe, ate lunch, read, napped, ate a light dinner, read, got ready for bed, went to bed at 8 pm. As you can see he lead an exciting life. But he did this normal routine and it was his life before his life got disrupted.

This was also the month that my mother found the English translation of "The Armenian Golgotha" the book that documented the most dramatic and comprehensive eyewitnesses of The Genocide. This book is meaningful to us because it has a passage about Ago's father, where it basically chronicles his death. This was the first text in English to put in words what happened to my family history. This was the first text that allowed the rest of the world to know and understand not only what happened to my family and other families like mine, but also why The Armenian Genocide is such an issue more than 90 years after it occurred: because it was wrong and because it is denied today. But most importantly this put my great-grandfather in existence, he lived, this happened to him, and who can deny that?

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